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So to speak

Bhagavad-gita As It Is

BG Chapters 1 - 6

BG 4.9, Purport:

That there is no alternative means that anyone who does not understand Lord Kṛṣṇa as the Supreme Personality of Godhead is surely in the mode of ignorance and consequently he will not attain salvation simply, so to speak, by licking the outer surface of the bottle of honey, or by interpreting the Bhagavad-gītā according to mundane scholarship. Such empiric philosophers may assume very important roles in the material world, but they are not necessarily eligible for liberation. Such puffed-up mundane scholars have to wait for the causeless mercy of the devotee of the Lord. One should therefore cultivate Kṛṣṇa consciousness with faith and knowledge, and in this way attain perfection.

BG Chapters 7 - 12

BG 9.23, Purport:

Kṛṣṇa says. For example, when a man pours water on the leaves and branches of a tree without pouring water on the root, he does so without sufficient knowledge or without observing regulative principles. Similarly, the process of rendering service to different parts of the body is to supply food to the stomach. The demigods are, so to speak, different officers and directors in the government of the Supreme Lord. One has to follow the laws made by the government, not by the officers or directors. Similarly, everyone is to offer his worship to the Supreme Lord only. That will automatically satisfy the different officers and directors of the Lord. The officers and directors are engaged as representatives of the government, and to offer some bribe to the officers and directors is illegal. This is stated here as avidhi-pūrvakam. In other words, Kṛṣṇa does not approve the unnecessary worship of the demigods.

Srimad-Bhagavatam

SB Canto 1

SB 1.8.18, Purport:

In the Bhagavad-gītā (15.15) the Lord says, "I am situated in everyone's heart, and only due to Me one remembers, forgets and is cognizant, etc. Through all the Vedas I am to be known because I am the compiler of the Vedas, and I am the teacher of the Vedānta." Queen Kuntī affirms that the Lord, although both within and without all living beings, is still invisible. The Lord is, so to speak, a puzzle for the common man. Queen Kuntī experienced personally that Lord Kṛṣṇa was present before her, yet He entered within the womb of Uttarā to save her embryo from the attack of Aśvatthāmā's brahmāstra. Kuntī herself was puzzled about whether Śrī Kṛṣṇa is all-pervasive or localized. In fact, He is both, but He reserves the right of not being exposed to persons who are not surrendered souls. This checking curtain is called the māyā energy of the Supreme Lord, and it controls the limited vision of the rebellious soul. It is explained as follows.

SB 1.8.26, Purport:

A materially puffed up person may utter the holy name of the Lord occasionally, but he is incapable of uttering the name in quality. Therefore, the four principles of material advancement, namely (1) high parentage, (2) good wealth, (3) high education and (4) attractive beauty, are, so to speak, disqualifications for progress on the path of spiritual advancement. The material covering of the pure spirit soul is an external feature, as much as fever is an external feature of the unhealthy body. The general process is to decrease the degree of the fever and not to aggravate it by maltreatment. Sometimes it is seen that spiritually advanced persons become materially impoverished. This is no discouragement. On the other hand, such impoverishment is a good sign as much as the falling of temperature is a good sign.

SB 1.9.26, Purport:

The śūdras must first of all be satisfied by sumptuous food and clothing before any sacrifice is performed. In this age so many functions are held by spending millions, but the poor laborer is not sumptuously fed or given charity, clothing, etc. The laborers are thus dissatisfied, and so they make agitation.

The varṇas are, so to speak, classifications of different occupations, and āśrama-dharma is gradual progress on the path of self-realization. Both are interrelated, and one is dependent on the other. The main purpose of āśrama-dharma is to awaken knowledge and detachment. The brahmacārī āśrama is the training ground for the prospective candidates. In this āśrama it is instructed that this material world is not actually the home of the living being. The conditioned souls under material bondage are prisoners of matter, and therefore self-realization is the ultimate aim of life. The whole system of āśrama-dharma is a means to detachment.

SB 1.10.6, Purport:

There is a proverb in Bengali that a bad king spoils the kingdom and a bad housewife spoils the family. This truth is applicable here also. Because the King was pious and obedient to the Lord and sages, because he was no one's enemy and because he was a recognized agent of the Lord and therefore protected by Him, all the citizens under the King's protection were, so to speak, directly protected by the Lord and His authorized agents. Unless one is pious and recognized by the Lord, he cannot make others happy who are under his care. There is full cooperation between man and God and man and nature, and this conscious cooperation between man and God and man and nature, as exemplified by King Yudhiṣṭhira, can bring about happiness, peace and prosperity in the world. The attitude of exploiting one another, the custom of the day, will only bring misery.

SB 1.11.23, Purport:

The brāhmaṇas in society were never attentive to banking money for future retired life. When they were old invalids, they used to approach with their wives the assembly of the kings, and simply by praising the glorious deeds performed by the kings they would be provided with all necessities of life. Such brāhmaṇas were not, so to speak, flatterers of the kings, but the kings were actually glorified by their actions, and they were sincerely still more encouraged in pious acts by such brāhmaṇas in a dignified way. Lord Śrī Kṛṣṇa is worthy of all glories, and the praying brāhmaṇas and others were glorified themselves by chanting the glories of the Lord.

SB 1.13.8, Purport:

Mahātmā Vidura could follow this intrigue of Dhṛtarāṣṭra and company, and therefore, even though he was a faithful servitor of his eldest brother, Dhṛtarāṣṭra, he did not like his political ambition for the sake of his own sons. He was therefore very careful about the protection of the Pāṇḍavas and their widow mother. Thus he was, so to speak, partial to the Pāṇḍavas, preferring them to the sons of Dhṛtarāṣṭra, although both of them were equally affectionate in his ordinary eyes. He was equally affectionate to both the camps of nephews in the sense that he always chastised Duryodhana for his intriguing policy against his cousins. He always criticized his elder brother for his policy of encouragement to his sons, and at the same time he was always alert in giving special protection to the Pāṇḍavas. All these different activities of Vidura within the palace politics made him well-known as partial to the Pāṇḍavas. Mahārāja Yudhiṣṭhira has referred to the past history of Vidura before his going away from home for a prolonged pilgrim's journey.

SB 1.16.6, Purport:

Even when the Lord descends to any one of the mundane planets, He does so by manifesting His own abode as it is. Thus His feet remain always on the same big whorl of the lotus flower. His feet are also as beautiful as the lotus flower. Therefore it is said that Lord Kṛṣṇa has lotus feet.

A living being is eternal by constitution. He is, so to speak, in the whirlpool of birth and death due to his contact with material energy. Freed from such material energy, a living entity is liberated and is eligible to return home, back to Godhead. Those who want to live forever without changing their material bodies should not waste valuable time with topics other than those relating to Lord Kṛṣṇa and His devotees.

SB Canto 2

SB 2.6.22, Purport:

The ekapād-vibhūti manifestation of the material energy of the Lord is just like one of the many mistresses of the Lord, by whom the Lord is not so much attracted, as indicated in the language of the Gītā (bhinnā prakṛtiḥ). But the region of the tripād-vibhūti, being a pure spiritual manifestation of the energy of the Lord, is, so to speak, more attractive to Him. The Lord, therefore, generates the material manifestations by impregnating the material energy, and then, within the manifestation, He expands Himself as the gigantic form of the viśva-rūpa. The viśva-rūpa, as it was shown to Arjuna, is not the original form of the Lord. The original form of the Lord is the transcendental form of Puruṣottama, or Kṛṣṇa Himself. It is very nicely explained herein that He expands Himself just like the sun. The sun expands itself by its terrible heat and rays, yet the sun is always aloof from such rays and heat. The impersonalist takes into consideration the rays of the Lord without any information of the tangible, transcendental, eternal form of the Lord, known as Kṛṣṇa.

SB 2.6.23, Purport:

For sacrificial performances many ingredients were in need, especially animals. The animal sacrifice is never meant for killing the animal, but for achieving the successful result of the sacrifice. The animal offered in the sacrificial fire is, so to speak, destroyed, but the next moment it is given a new life by dint of the Vedic hymns chanted by the expert priest. When such an expert priest is not available, the animal sacrifice in the fire of the sacrificial altar is forbidden. Thus Brahmā created even the sacrificial ingredients out of the bodily limbs of the Garbhodakaśāyī Viṣṇu, which means that the cosmic order was created by Brahmā himself. Also, nothing is created out of nothing, but everything is created from the person of the Lord. The Lord says in the Bhagavad-gītā (10.8), ahaṁ sarvasya prabhavo mattaḥ sarvaṁ pravartate. "Everything is made from My bodily limbs, and I am therefore the original source of all creations."

SB 2.7.52, Purport:

His potential energies, but with the beginning of the age of Kali human society gradually became influenced by four sinful principles, namely illegitimate connection with women, intoxication, gambling and unnecessary killing of animals. Because of these basic sinful acts, man gradually became forgetful of his eternal relation with God. Therefore man became blind, so to speak, to his ultimate goal of life. The ultimate goal of life is not to pass a life of irresponsibility like the animals and indulge in a polished way in the four animal principles, namely eating, sleeping, fearing and mating. For such a blind human society in the darkness of ignorance, Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam is the torchlight to see things in proper perspective. Therefore it was necessary to describe the science of God from the very beginning, or from the very birth of the phenomenal world.

SB 2.10.19, Purport:

The peculiarity of the gradual development of the different senses is simultaneously supported by their controlling deities. It is to be understood, therefore, that the activities of the sense organs are controlled by the will of the Supreme. The senses are, so to speak, offering a license for the conditioned souls, who are to use them properly under the control of the controlling deity deputed by the Supreme Lord. One who violates such controlling regulations has to be punished by degradation to a lower status of life. Consider, for example, the tongue and its controlling deity, Varuṇa. The tongue is meant for eating, and men, animals and birds each have their different tastes because of different licenses. The taste of human beings and that of the swine are not on the same level. The controlling deity, however, awards or certifies a particular type of body when the particular living entity develops a taste in terms of different modes of nature.

SB Canto 7

SB 7.3.24, Purport:

The process of watering a tree is to pour water on the root. Similarly, the process of rendering service to different parts of the body is to supply food to the stomach. The demigods are, so to speak, different officers and directors in the government of the Supreme Lord. One has to follow the laws made by the government, not by the officers or directors. Similarly, everyone is to offer his worship to the Supreme Lord only. That will automatically satisfy the different officers and directors of the Lord. The officers and directors are engaged as representatives of the government, and to offer some bribe to the officers and directors is illegal. This is stated in Bhagavad-gītā as avidhi-pūrvakam. In other words, Kṛṣṇa does not approve the unnecessary worship of the demigods.

Other Books by Srila Prabhupada

Renunciation Through Wisdom

Renunciation Through Wisdom 4.5:

The undifferentiated Absolute Truth, the original Supreme Personality, Lord Śrī Kṛṣṇa, incarnates in this material world once in every day of Lord Brahmā—that is once every 8,640,000,000 solar years—to shower His mercy upon both His surrendered devotees and the atheistic nondevotees. He protects His devotees and slays the atheistic demons, thus giving the latter troublesome release, so to speak, in impersonal liberation. The Bhagavad-gītā, on the other hand, teaches liberation through devotional service to the Supreme Lord. The only way to obtain this devotional service is to take full shelter of the spiritual authority, the guru, who is coming in the line of a proper disciplic succession. Those who toil without worshiping the spiritual master will find that all their endeavors are futile.

Sri Isopanisad

Sri Isopanisad 10, Purport:

In the modern society, even a boy thinks himself self-sufficient and pays no respect to elderly men. Due to the wrong type of education being imparted in our universities, boys all over the world are giving their elders headaches. Thus Śrī Īśopaniṣad very strongly warns that the culture of nescience is different from that of knowledge. The universities are, so to speak, centers of nescience only; consequently scientists are busy discovering lethal weapons to wipe out the existence of other countries. University students today are not given instructions in the regulative principles of brahmacarya (celibate student life), nor do they have any faith in any scriptural injunctions. Religious principles are taught for the sake of name and fame only and not for the sake of practical action. Thus there is animosity not only in social and political fields but in the field of religion as well.

Mukunda-mala-stotra (mantras 1 to 6 only)

Mukunda-mala-stotra mantra 3, Purport:

The world in which we live is a miserable place. It is, so to speak, a prison house for the spirit soul. Just as a prisoner cannot move or enjoy life fully, so the living entities who have been conditioned by the laws of material nature cannot experience their actual ever-joyful nature. They cannot have any freedom, because they must suffer four principal miseries—birth, old age, disease, and death. The laws of material nature impose this punishment upon the living entities who have forgotten the Lord and who are busy making plans for lasting happiness in this desert of distress.

Lectures

Bhagavad-gita As It Is Lectures

Lecture on BG 4.7-10 -- Los Angeles, January 6, 1969:

One can attain the perfect stage of liberation from birth and death simply by knowing the Lord, the Supreme Personality of Godhead. There is no alternative means, because anyone who does not understand Lord Kṛṣṇa as the Supreme Personality of Godhead is surely in the mode of ignorance. Consequently he will not attain salvation simply, so to speak, by licking the outer surface of the bottle of honey or by interpreting the text of the Bhagavad-gītā according to his own mundane scholarship. Such empiric philosophers may assume very important roles in the material world, but they are not necessarily eligible for liberation. Such puffed up mundane scholars have to wait for the causeless mercy of the devotee of the Lord. One should, therefore, accept the principle of Kṛṣṇa consciousness with faith and knowledge, and in this way one can attain the perfection of life."

Srimad-Bhagavatam Lectures

Lecture on SB 1.2.17 -- San Francisco, March 25, 1967:

Mukunda: If a good man, who is passed through the states of being ignorant and passionate and he's really a good man, is walking down the street, let's say, in Delhi or Istanbul or any place, any city. And he sees a very young man beating up on a very old man just for no reason at all. He's just beating up, beating him to death. And the old man is calling out for help and there's a few people standing around. And as he approaches, he, he begins to get stirred by this scene. And being a good man he feels the whip on this other human being's back. Now, as a good man, should he not take sides on the two people quarreling and accept it and just walk on, even though he feels something welling up in him, or should he give way to what would be a passionate desire and try to interrupt and stop this injustice, so to speak?

Prabhupāda: The whole idea is that action, either in ignorance or passion or goodness... We have discussed that point. That doesn't matter. But action should be done from the spiritual consciousness platform. That's all. Then you transcend the reaction. Just like, for example, Arjuna. Arjuna's fighting... This fighting is on the modes of passion, passion. Now, when the, that work of passion, if he does... Now, Arjuna was thinking not to fight, not to fight, because he thought that "Fighting with my brothers, with my relatives, is not good."

Arrival Addresses and Talks

Arrival Lecture -- Gainesville, July 29, 1971:

Woman Guest: I know some of the devotees have had to sever relationships, so to speak, with their material world parents, and it gives them some degree of grief, because their parents don't understand. Now what do you tell them to kind of make this easier?

Prabhupāda: Well, a boy who is in Kṛṣṇa consciousness, he is giving the best service to his parents, families, countrymen, society. Without being Kṛṣṇa conscious, what service they are giving to their parents? Mostly they are separated. But, as Prahlāda Mahārāja was a great devotee and his father was a great nondevotee, so much so that his father was killed by Nṛsiṁha-deva, but Prahlāda Mahārāja, when he was ordered by the Lord to take some benediction, he said that "I am not a merchant, Sir, that by giving You some service I'll take some return. Please excuse me." Nṛsiṁha-deva was very much satisfied: "Here is a pure devotee." But the same pure devotee requested the Lord, "My Lord, my father was atheist, and he has committed so many offenses, so I beg that my father may be liberated." And Nṛsiṁha-deva said, "Your father is already liberated because you are the, his son. In spite of all his offenses, he is liberated, because you are his son.

General Lectures

Lecture -- Seattle, October 2, 1968:

Young man (2): Since you are a ray of the sun, so to speak...

Prabhupāda: Yes.

Young man (2): Could you think of yourself? And when you think, you are thinking of Kṛṣṇa?

Prabhupāda: Why not? I am individual... Although I am small, but I am individual. I have got all the power of thinking, feeling, willing. We are doing that. We are individual. You have come here by your individual will. Nobody has forced you. If you like, you can go. Somebody comes here, somebody never comes, somebody comes daily. Why? Even you are small, you have got individuality. Even in this conditioned state, you are so free, so much free. And when you are unconditioned, purely spirit, you do not know how much freedom you have got. It doesn't matter you are small, but you are a spiritual spark. Don't you see that a small spiritual spark which no physician, no medical science has still discovered, where is the soul, but the soul is there. That is a fact. As soon as the soul is gone from this body, it is useless.

Philosophy Discussions

Philosophy Discussion on Jean-Paul Sartre:

Hayagrīva: He believes that each man is responsible for other men, but that he believes..., he also believes that each man has the freedom to work out his own destiny, so to speak.

Prabhupāda: Say, suppose if I want to do with you some, something good, and you are free. So if you don't accept me, then I don't accept that, that is, means chaotic. How you are responsible for me? If I don't obey, so how you can become responsible for me? So he says that a man should be responsible for other men. But if he does not obey you, where is the responsibility? So crazy fellow that.

Hayagrīva: It appears to be contradictory.

Prabhupāda: Everything is contradictory. That must be contradictory. Unless there is standard idea, standard thing, there must be contradiction.

Hayagrīva: This is the last point. He says, "To be man..."

Prabhupāda: Therefore we say first of all God.

Conversations and Morning Walks

1968 Conversations and Morning Walks

Room Conversation about Marriage -- September 24, 1968, Seattle:

Tamāla Kṛṣṇa: Yes. And her children have been placed in the custody of the girl's parents. So the girl does not even have custody of the children. So she is not in any way, so to speak,... She does not have to stay in this city because of her children because the courts have decided that her mother will take charge of the children. She has brought them to the temple on weekends. They're very intelligent. They like to... Oh, they like the puppets. They like to paint and draw pictures of Kṛṣṇa.

Prabhupāda: But how she can travel with you? She has no husband.

Tamāla Kṛṣṇa: No. So what do you think? Is it all right for her to travel with us or better not to?

Prabhupāda: Because she has no husband?

Press Interview -- December 30, 1968, Los Angeles:

Journalist: I don't know. I must ponder that.

Prabhupāda: You should know it. How it can be. There must be a very big brain behind this. They are working.

Journalist: Now do you say that the moon is, so to speak...? What should I say? Headquarters, where these demigods live?

Prabhupāda: No, there are many planets on the same level. There are many planets. Moon is one of them.

Journalist: Have any of these demigod creatures visited the earth or...

Prabhupāda: Formerly they used to because at that time people were worth to see them. You see?

Press Interview -- December 30, 1968, Los Angeles:

Prabhupāda: That is... Of course, he had some Hindu cultural ideas, yes. That is nice. He began celibacy, that's all right. But Gandhi had no very advanced spiritual ideas. You see. He was more or less politician, statesman. Yes, that's all.

Journalist: Yes. A very courageous man. Well the answer seems very pat, so to speak, and if it's that...

Prabhupāda: Now, if you cooperate, then I can change the whole thing in your country. They will be very happy. Their everything will be very nice. This Kṛṣṇa consciousness movement is so nice. Provided you cooperate. Nobody is cooperating. Simply these boys, they have kindly come to me and cooperating. So my movement is progressing, but very slowly. But if the leaders of the American people, they come and they try to understand and they try to introduce this system, oh, your country will be the nicest country in the world.

Press Interview -- December 30, 1968, Los Angeles:

Hayagrīva: Well, there are desires, and we have so many desires. And the sexual desire is perhaps one of our strongest desires. So...

Prabhupāda: Yes, yes.

Hayagrīva: So these desires are channelled so to speak. They are redirected and they are directed toward Kṛṣṇa.

Journalist: Well, I understand that, but I'm saying is it efficacious? Does it work?

Hayagrīva: Yes, it works. It works. But you have to stick with it. It can be very difficult, especially at first, but it works. You have to resolve to make it work. You have to want it to work.

Journalist: Now, I want to understand this thoroughly. In other words, it's nothing that you feel that you're giving up.

1971 Conversations and Morning Walks

Room Conversation with Dr. Weir of the Mensa Society -- September 5, 1971, London:

Mensa Member: So you wouldn't accept the prime mover either?

Dr. Weir: Well, it's not an argument, it's a postulate. I don't accept it. I mean, you have to accept it if you're going to... You know the (indistinct), so to speak. You can't have it half way.

Prabhupāda: This word positive and negative. Just like the sun—the backside is the negative and the front side is the positive, light and darkness.

Dr. Weir: Well the sun doesn't have a backside of darkness. It's light all round.

Prabhupāda: I mean to say, in relationship with the sun, the planet, the planet, in the front side there is light. In the backside there is darkness. But the darkness is the effect of the light. Where the light is absent there is darkness.

1973 Conversations and Morning Walks

Morning Walk -- August 30, 1973, London:

Prabhupāda: Yes.

David Lawrence: Let me think of one, yes, one that I asked which I know Mukunda has already answered for me, but we need it in the teachers' pack, of course, is the fact of the dating of the Vedas. You know, people like some of the archaeologists such as A.L. Basham and Mortimer Wheeler maintain that the Harrapa dig, so to speak, in the Indus Valley and Mahenjo-Daro and all those towns, show the dating of the Vedas in fact to be a great deal later, you know, and therefore to take away, some people would say this, to deprive the Vedas of a certain amount of authority because they no longer, according to these men, would appear to be the most ancient religious scriptures in the world. And that, that sort of question, which...

Prabhupāda: Veda means not religion, Veda means knowledge. So if you can trace out the history of knowledge, then you can trace out what is the date of Veda. Can you trace out? When...? Which is the date when knowledge began. Can you trace out?

1974 Conversations and Morning Walks

Room Conversation with Bishop Kelly -- June 29, 1974, Melbourne:

Bishop Kelly: Well, of course, the difficulty as you rightly point out many times there, that man in the present day civilization, he is so often mesmerized, he is captivated by what he sees in front of him... It is the modern garden of Eden that he sees. He sees many delectable apple trees, so to speak, and he feels in the new vaunted value given to personalism and the expression of self, and the self-seeking, that he reaches out towards those things, and I'm afraid that in many cases the difficulty is to convince him that he is only getting poor substitutes until he has tasted and eaten and tried to digest and finds, you know, that there is no satisfaction, there is no wholesome food to be found there.

Prabhupāda: That is also stated in the Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam by... That is also statement of Prahlāda Mahārāja, this boy devotee. He says, na te viduḥ svārtha-gatiṁ hi viṣṇum: (SB 7.5.31) "These foolish people, they do not know, what is their actual self-interest." So he says, "They do not know the actual self-interest is approaching God. That is real self-interest. But they do not know it." Na te viduḥ svārtha-gatiṁ hi viṣṇuṁ durāśayā (SB 7.5.31). "They have made their plan wrongly to become happy in this material world." Na te viduḥ svārtha-gatiṁ hi viṣṇuṁ durāśayā ye bahir-artha-māninaḥ (SB 7.5.31).

1975 Conversations and Morning Walks

Morning Walk -- May 28, 1975, Honolulu:

Guest (1): Sure. That's right. I understand that, and, you know, I'm very broad-minded. I always have said... You know, one time in our Methodist church we had a professor that was giving all religions of the world. And this is rather putting it simply and fast, but it was interesting because of all the different religions, even though they all didn't believe in the divine being, Christ being the son of God, in some cases-there's Buddha and so forth—but they all were preaching about going to the same place, so to speak. And it's peculiar. They all had more or less the Ten Commandments. In other words they all believed in doing the same thing. So that was interesting...

Prabhupāda: But I don't think Christians believe.

1976 Conversations and Morning Walks

Conversation with Clergymen -- June 15, 1976, Detroit:

Prabhupāda: I am also very much obliged that you came.

Kern: And we are happy. And if we can be helpful, we would be...

Prabhupāda: Yes, let us cooperate for the whole human society.

Scheverman: I feel very much like one of the disciples, so to speak, coming with the master, and it's a great privilege to be able to join this circle this evening.

Devotees: Jaya! Haribol.

Scheverman: Thank you. Oh, we're to eat this?

Hari-śauri: Oh, yes, that's what it's meant for.

Dhṛṣṭadyumna: Father, would you please accept one of our Bhagavad-gītās for your library?

Answers to a Questionnaire from Bhavan's Journal -- June 28, 1976, Vrndavana:

Puṣṭa Kṛṣṇa: This question here is "In doctrinal content and mode of individual and collective worship..." Is that to say that in your preaching in the Western countries and your preaching in India, you haven't attempted... In the Western countries where there is so many mlecchas, outcastes, so to speak.

Prabhupāda: That is accepted by Kṛṣṇa. Even one is mleccha. Māṁ hi pārtha vyapāśritya ye 'pi syuḥ pāpa-yonayaḥ (BG 9.32). So there is no question. That is artificial. One is mleccha or one is brāhmaṇa, but that is artificial. That is skin. But within the skin of the mleccha or the brāhmaṇa the same spirit soul is there. Therefore those who are paṇḍita, those who are learned,

vidyā-vinaya-sampanne
brāhmaṇe gavi hastini
śuni caiva śva-pāke ca
paṇḍitāḥ sama-darśinaḥ
(BG 5.18)

One who is actually learned, he sees the same spirit soul within the brāhmaṇa, within the mleccha, within the cat. (end)

Evening Darsana -- July 13, 1976, New York:

Prabhupāda: First class.

Puṣṭa Kṛṣṇa: ...of the human society. But actually it's one body, one entity already, simply that with different activities that we have to perform. The example is given, mukhe bāhūru pāda-ja: That there is the head; there's the arms; there's the belly, the abdomen; and then there is the legs. And all of them are part of the same body. So you might say that the legs are removed from the head, or that the head is removed from the stomach, but actually it's all one body and it works together. But the head gives direction to the whole body, how to act properly, so that the benefit is there to be derived. So Śrīla Prabhupāda is creating a class of brāhmaṇas, or heads of human society, who can give direction to the whole sphere of human activities so that they can become successful in human life. So in reality, we're not trying to create farmers, we're trying to create brāhmaṇas. But our farming communities are, so to speak, an example, an ideal example how human society can live: some people in the capacity of preachers, some people in the capacity of farmers, how so many activities can go on—various occupations—but all of them can be God-centered.

Page Title:So to speak
Compiler:Visnu Murti, RupaManjari
Created:24 of Jun, 2012
Totals by Section:BG=2, SB=12, CC=0, OB=3, Lec=5, Con=11, Let=0
No. of Quotes:33